Chapter 157: Blurring Lines

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Bei Hong and Bei Duyi are left as little more than bruises.

Internal bleeding, broken bones, and cracked skulls. There is little they didn’t do to each other. Their bloodied, beaten forms are laid out over stone platforms in what has become an improvised clinic of sorts. Few make the journey across the Dead Plains without serious injuries, making any semblance of medical facilities entirely necessary.

Fan Bingbing told him this room was most likely once used for fertility rituals, but Liu Jin isn’t about to share that with anyone.

Regardless, Bei Hong and Bei Duyi sorely need medical attention. Only their meridians and dantian are in good condition, but Liu Jin knew that even before having them brought here. Had he sensed either of them trying to cause permanent damage to the other during their fight, he’d have put a stop to it regardless of what the two idiots might have felt about it.

“How are they?”

Liu Jin feels Lu Mei enter the room before he hears her. Still, he does not turn to face her just yet. He is busy mending the bodies of the Bei cousins. His hands glow with Qi as he moves around them. Needles, potions, and salves are applied one after another with methodical precision.

“They will live,” Liu Jin says, deciding to remove the worst possibility from consideration right away. “No lasting damage was done, so I expect them to make a full recovery.”

“No lasting damage was done?” Lu Mei echoes incredulously. “Even though they look like that?”

He can almost imagine the way she crosses her arms and gives a pointed glare to the two giant bruises laid out over the stone beds.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” Liu Jin says as he continues treating them. “Even with their regenerative abilities, it will take time for them to recover, but the fact that they are capable of it is nothing short of amazing. It is almost like they held back a little.”

“If you say it like that, it almost sounds like you’re implying that was the case.”

“I am,” Liu Jin admits. “Though they fought for hours, they never once put the weight of their souls behind their attacks. Not fully, at least. We’d be having a different conversation otherwise.”

Thanks to their time in the Dead Plains, Bei Hong and Bei Duyi are at or near the late stages of the Spirit Realm. Even if they have not been instructed in the ways of the soul, it should be impossible for two cultivators of their level to not put their soul into their attacks. That their spiritual damage is so relatively minor compared to the physical one suggests purposefulness.

“So they’re both idiots.” Lu Mei sighs. “Stupidity seems to run deep in the Bei Clan.”

“That it does.”

“And yet you look happy.”

Liu Jin blinks and looks up at Lu Mei. “Do I?”

“A lady tends to notice if her partner feels happier around would-be corpses than he does anywhere else.” Her Qi brushes against his. She has gotten better at sensing emotions, it seems. “Had I not felt your emotions when we kissed, I’d be a little worried.”

“What? I am not…” Liu Jin trails off, the reflexive response lost on his lips as he forces himself to think. Whether he’s happier now than a few minutes ago, he cannot deny that he hasn’t exactly been happy lately, can he?

“I enjoy being a doctor,” Liu Jin says at last.

“You are good at it.”

“It is not just that,” Liu Jin says as he continues treating Bei Hong. Now that Lu Mei has pointed it out, he can feel the lightness in his chest, the briskness with which he moves when he heals.

Unsurprisingly, he feels most fulfilled when healing.

“You once told me you did not believe me to be a man of small ambitions,” Liu Jin says, finally meeting her eyes. A small smile tugs at his lips. “However, if I had my way, I would be nothing but a man of small ambitions. When I was a child, I wanted nothing more than to follow in my father’s footsteps. I didn’t need riches or power. I didn’t even need to leave the city where I was born. Being a doctor like my father was all I ever wanted. That was enough for me.”

When I was a child.

How odd it is to think of himself that way when not even two years have passed since the fall of Eastern Port City. It is not as if he is a grown man now. The opposite, really. The weight of his youth and inexperience has only become more noticeable with time.

“I wish I could have stayed that way.”

“But you didn’t. You haven’t,” Lu Mei points out, moving closer to him. “You are in the middle of the Dead Plains, taking part in a game that will decide the future of the Eternal Flame Clan. In a matter of months, you have become a major figure in Lord Feng Gui’s faction. Not only that, but in just a couple of weeks, you have gathered followers, many of whom worship you.”

“You have been talking to Ten,” Liu Jin guesses. The disciple from the Armory has made no secret that he believes everyone here stands more to gain by following Liu Jin than by staying loyal to a Sect that has clearly not valued their service.

While Liu Jin can understand those feelings, he is glad people like Ten are a minority. That is not to say the other disciples aren’t loyal to him. They just aren’t extreme enough to suggest he should start his own Sect.

“Him and a few others,” Lu Mei says, not bothering to hide it. “You have a knack for gathering people around you. Of course, the cultivation pills you have made for them likely helped.”

Liu Jin blinks, impressed. So she even knows about that. Though she has only been here for a few hours, it seems she already has a good grasp on the situation.

“I gather people around me so that they won’t die, and I made cultivation pills for them for the same reason,” Liu Jin says. The cultivation pills he made for the disciples here are not the best he could have made, but they have served their purpose. Give the disciples power so they can better survive the Dead Plains. “They are understandably grateful.”

“Not just grateful,” Lu Mei says. Though she tries to keep her voice calm, her Qi vibrates with anticipation. “Grateful is a smile and a nod. Grateful is a small favor without cost or struggle. They are loyal. They are in awe. They are ready.”

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“Ready for what?”

“Whatever you wish,” she says with a shrug. She stands next to him, looking down at his hands as they work on Bei Hong’s body. “I will not tell you to humor foolish delusions about abandoning the Sect right now. However, you are doing all of this for something, aren’t you? That little vengeance quest of yours.”

That little vengeance quest. Lu Mei says it so dismissively it almost makes him laugh. From her perspective, it must surely seem petty. Liu Jin has joined one of the strongest Sects in the Crimson Cloud Empire and gained power in it only for the sake of interfering with the affairs of a country in ruins.

“It is not a vengeance quest,” Liu Jin says, almost automatically. “You called it that before. You are not the first one to do so. You are wrong all the same.”

“You seek to strike the man who took your family and hometown from you. You must understand saying it is not revenge rings hollow when taking the facts into consideration.”

Liu Jin supposes he cannot fault her for thinking like that. It took him a long time to get it through Lei Kong’s head that, regardless of his personal feelings, his reasons for interfering with Murong Bang are not a matter of revenge.

“I seek to stop Murong Bang, not for what he did but for what he will keep doing if left to his own devices,” Liu Jin says as he finishes with Bei Hong and moves over to Bei Duyi. “However, it is not just him. Murong Bang did not appear fully formed out of thin air. Murong Bang is a symptom. It is the state of the Storm Dragon Empire that created him, and that is exactly why I came to the Eternal Flame Clan.”

Liu Jin pauses. One of Bei Duyi’s arms is dislocated. With a grunt and twist, he pushes it back into place.

“The Eternal Flame Clan controls one of the Three Heavenly Generals. The current policy is to use him to keep the war going. However, the Eternal Flame Clan can change its policy, and I intend to make the Eternal Flame Clan change it.”